Death in an English Cottage: Book Two in the Murder on Location Series

by Sara Rosett

  “Yes,” I said. “I know it sounds improbable, but well…” I waved to my notebook and my laptop. “It’s what I found.”

  I had come straight to the church hall from the pub. Quimby and Olney were out, but Constable Albertson had seen me from across the room as I tried to convince the officer manning the table near the door that I needed to get a message to the inspector.

  “And your theories are based on…social media?” Constable Albertson looked up at me, a doubtful expression on his craggy face. He pronounced the words social media as if they were a dangerous, unknown quantity.

  “Yes. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but she was very into it. You can find out a lot about people online, if you look at their profiles and what they post. And then there’s the public notice in the Gazette. That’s an official record, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, but we don’t know for sure that this woman—this Amy Brown—was indeed Lillian at one time.” I drew in a breath, but he held up a hand. “But seeing as you’ve brought all this to our attention, we’d better find out. Mind if I make copies of your notes?”

  “Not at all.” I handed him the notebook.

  “While I do that, better forward those articles to my email.” He wrote it down for me. “I’ll see that the inspector gets them.”

  “Excellent,” I said, feeling relieved. Surely this would turn the investigation away from Alex. By the time I’d forwarded the links with the news stories, as well as the public record name change notice, Constable Albertson had returned my notebook to me. I felt as if a weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

  “I looked up Felix’s IMDB profile before I came down here,” I added.

  “His what?”

  “His profile in the Internet Movie Database. It’s a website with cast and crew lists. The names are searchable. There’s nothing in Felix’s profile older than three years. When I first met him, he said he’d recently gotten involved in the business.”

  Constable Albertson made a note as he muttered, “Everything is online nowadays.” Then he escorted me to the door, but paused before pushing it open. “Did you run across any mention of Rafe Farraday in all your Internet searches?”

  “No. That’s what I thought I would find. Maybe she took his online class at some point, but she never mentioned it in any of her posts or updates.”

  The constable shook his head. “No, we requested the enrollment records. Amy Brown never took an online class with him.”

  “Perhaps she was enrolled as Lillian?”

  Constable Albertson dipped his head, acknowledging the possibility. “The inspector will follow up on that, I’m sure. I’ll speak to him about it before I head out on vandalism patrol.”

  “Thank you. Has there been more vandalism since the fire?” I asked, thinking that I hadn’t heard anything about it, if there had been.

  “No, not so much as a squiggle of graffiti.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  He pushed open the door and said that Quimby would probably want to speak to me later. I went out into the cool of the early evening, lost in thought. Perhaps Lillian had been bookish and studied classic English novels, but in my heart of hearts I didn’t think so. Wouldn’t some reference to books or reading have cropped up somewhere in Amy Brown’s online discussions and dialogues? Would it be possible to regulate so closely what you said that you completely eliminated references to certain interests?

  And why would she need to? If Amy Brown loved literature, that interest had nothing to do with a fugitive financier. Nothing about Jane Austen or books or reading would link her to Harry Lyster. No, the things she’d have to be careful of revealing were personal details about her prior work at an investment company and anything that would indicate she’d lived in London or known Harry Lyster, all topics that she steered clear of.

  The shadows were lengthening as I crossed the green, but it was only late afternoon. There were still plenty of hours of sunlight left. I had spent quite a while in the church hall, first waiting to speak to Constable Albertson and then explaining what I’d found.

  I took the short cut that ran through the bike trail parking lot. I emerged onto the path that lined the back of the cottages, still lost in thought.

  I’d wondered earlier if Felix had killed Lillian because she rebuffed his advances, but being exposed as a criminal who had bilked millions of dollars from innocent investors…well, that put things in a different light. But, again, the strange detail that wouldn’t fit together was Rafe…or more specifically, Rafe’s cottage. If Lillian recognized Felix Carrick as Hector Lyster and he killed her, why would he leave the body in Rafe’s cottage?

  Rafe himself was like a jigsaw puzzle piece that had been put away in the wrong box. He just didn’t seem to fit. Apparently, he hadn’t known the dead woman. I supposed that as the police searched Lillian’s history, they might find a connection. Rafe and Lillian did live on different continents, but there was always the Internet. Perhaps they had connected through a dating site, but in her “Amy” persona Lillian had never mentioned using a dating site. And I was sure Rafe had other interests besides English literature. Maybe they’d connected through some other interest or hobby.

  I trooped along the path, passing the gates to the back gardens. Rafe had denied knowing Amy Brown when he saw the sketch, and I’d really believed him later when he said he hadn’t killed the woman. I sighed as I stepped through my gate. What did I really know about Rafe? He was a literature professor. He was attractive, glib, and charming. He liked first editions. He had questionable taste in women. And he intended to leverage the Jane Austen letters—no, he intended to leverage his first-hand knowledge of the now destroyed letters to promote himself.

  I stopped short of the back door, suddenly remembering why that flash of blue and white in Rafe’s messenger bag had looked familiar. It was the first edition of The Great Gatsby, the one that I’d watched Rafe put away in the bookshelves the day before the fire. Incredibly lucky that he’d taken it with him to the library the next day shortly before the fire destroyed the front room of his cottage, the room that had also contained the Jane Austen letters. I stood motionless, ideas darting through my mind.

  Oh, yes, he was one lucky man. Maybe too lucky? He’d not only found undiscovered letters from one of literature’s most famous and most beloved authors, he’d also become the sole expert on those letters once the fire destroyed them. How incredibly lucky that he had notes and had studied them so extensively.

  I surged forward up the steps to the back door, but jerked to a stop when I spotted a pot of bright red tulips. Where had those come from? And the white bench with two pairs of rain boots under it?

  I hastily backed down the path. This wasn’t my cottage. It was the one next door. I should have noticed that latch on the gate. It moved so smoothly, not like mine that stuck and didn’t want to give, but I’d been so lost in thought that I hadn’t even noticed that I’d gone up the wrong path. I quickly relatched the gate and moved a few yards down the path to my gate, which looked exactly like the other gate. All the gates looked alike, and there was no variance in the low stone wall that ran the length of the path. Surprising, really, that I hadn’t made the mistake before.

  I was in the process of closing the gate, but paused. Someone had made that mistake—the murderer.

  Chapter 16

  I ATTACKED THE GATE LATCH, forcing it closed, then flew up the path to my door, but remembered at the last moment that I’d left through the front door this morning. The back would be bolted closed. I’d have to go in the front. It didn’t matter, I was on my way to the front of the cottage anyway. I ducked around the side of the house through the narrow opening between the house and the yews that divided the cottage gardens then emerged into the front garden. Instead of going to my door, I went to the front of Rafe’s burnt out cottage. Boards covered the front window and door, but that didn’t matter. I didn’t want to go inside. The ground in the front garden was still muddy from the water that t
he firefighters had pumped onto the fire. I carefully picked my way to the window at the front of the house, the window that had been full of flames when Alex and I arrived.

  Below it, only a stump remained of what had been a large bush, which had reached all the way up to the lowest panes of the window. I looked from the window back to my cottage, remembering the sound of breaking glass I’d heard. “And no vandalism since the fire,” I murmured to myself, thinking of what Constable Albertson had said. “Very clever, Rafe. Very clever.”

  “Did I hear my name?”

  I whirled around. Rafe stood in my path. I put my hand on my heart. “Oh, Rafe. You surprised me.”

  “Sorry about that. What are you doing?”

  “Oh, I ah—just looking around. I’m curious. It’s a fault of mine.”

  “Want a look inside?” Rafe asked, tossing back the flap of the messenger bag and digging around inside the bag. “I still have the keys to the back door. There are some things I want to get from the kitchen. The fire didn’t make it that far, so there should be a few things that are recoverable.”

  “Thanks, but no. Are you sure you should go in there?” I edged around him and down the path to the gate.

  “I’ve already been inside once. Worst part is the soot, but I came prepared this time.” He pulled out a pair of shoe covers and balanced on one foot as he worked the thin paper bootie over his shoe. “Surprising what they have down at the grocery, really.”

  “Yes,” I said, then murmured to myself, “Timers and everything.”

  “What’s that?” Rafe reached into his bag again for the other shoe cover, which shoved the edge of the bag down, revealing the book with blue letters on a white background. I tried to look away quickly and nonchalantly, but I must not have been fast enough because Rafe glanced quickly from me to the bag then hurriedly flung the flap into place.

  I backed through the gate. “Sorry to run, but I have an appointment.” I debated for a millisecond about whether I should try and walk casually away, but then I heard him swear, and the gate creak behind me as he followed me out.

  I sprinted through my gate, digging in my pocket for my keys.

  “Kate! Don’t go.”

  I shoved the key in the lock and turned it with more force than I’d ever used. After a second’s hesitation, the lock turned, and I slipped inside the door and shoved it closed in the same motion, but a solid, bootie-covered foot blocked the door from closing all the way.

  “Kate, please. I can see you’ve worked it out. Please, let me talk to you for a moment.” He didn’t look so charming and carefree now. He was breathing hard, and he had a desperate look that I’d never seen on his face. He braced his palm on the door and pushed. “I’ll give you a cut. Ten percent to keep this between us. Just let me explain it to you.”

  I shifted, putting one foot against the base of the door and leaning into it with my hip and shoulder.

  “You don’t have to explain anything to me. I know what happened. You faked the Jane Austen letters and then destroyed them in a fire so you’d be the only acknowledged ‘expert’ on them.” His pressure lessened on the door, so I went on. “You orchestrated the vandalism to your window by breaking the lowest pane, the one that the bush covered, before you left—that was the breaking glass I heard, but you were all prepared with an excuse in case anyone heard. You had your story about the bottle falling out of the recycling bin ready to go. Then all you had to do was position the lamp on the throw along with the rock that would confirm the vandalism story and set the lamp on a timer.”

  “Kate,” he said, his tone half pleading, half threatening.

  “You created your alibi by working in the library and then going to the pub. No one could accuse you of arson. Except you made one mistake. You couldn’t bear to let your first edition of The Great Gatsby burn. You had to save it. Well, that and the fact that you’re so attractive that the clerk at the grocery store remembered you wanted to purchase a timer for switching lights on and off. And that’s what I told the police.” I figured since I’d thrown all my thoughts out there a little insurance would be a good idea.

  “You didn’t.” He looked truly horrified. “No. No. No. That will ruin everything. I can’t have that.”

  “I did. I was at the church hall right before I came here. I told Constable Albertson everything I knew.”

  Rafe seemed to have shrunk. He didn’t seem so threatening, but his eyes were wild as his gaze darted around. “What am I going to do? I’ll be ruined—”

  I didn’t wait to hear the rest of his sentence. He’d moved his foot back a fraction of an inch. I put all my weight into shoving the door. It thudded into place, and I shot the bolt home with trembling fingers.

  I leaned against the door for a moment, breathing hard. The door was thick, and I couldn’t hear Rafe so I crept over to the front window and peered around the edge. He stood on the path, looking around uncertainly. With his dazed expression and one bootie covering a single shoe, he looked like a drunk who’d awoken and didn’t know where he was. He threw one look at my cottage then lurched down the lane toward the village.

  I scurried to the back door to check the bolt in case he decided to try that door. It was locked. I slowly unhooked my tote bag from my shoulder and dropped it on the kitchen table. I found my phone and then returned to the front window. If I leaned all the way to the far side of the window, I could barely make out Rafe’s figure as he paused at the end of the lane. He swayed a moment, then listed to the right and went down the short street into the village.

  I let out a breath and began to run through possible ways I could explain what I’d figured out to the police. What would be the shortest, least confusing way to do it? I looked at my phone, and realized I had a text message from Alex, which had come in within the last few minutes. I hadn’t heard it because my phone had been on vibrate and buried in my tote bag again.

  I ignored the text, going instead to my laptop where I looked up a number for the church hall. After being transferred a few times, I reached the incident room and asked to speak to Constable Albertson.

  “He’s not available. Can I take a message?”

  “What about Inspector Quimby? Or Sergeant Olney?”

  There was a pause, then the man said, “I’m sorry. Neither one of them can speak to you at the moment. Your name?”

  I gave my name and phone number to the man, but the thought of trying to explain that the fire was arson, and how I’d figured it out made me shake my head. Yes, officer it was a first edition of The Great Gatsby that tipped me off.

  Yeah. That would take some time to explain, and to do it on the phone…not such a good idea.

  I needed to go to the church hall and speak to someone in person, but I didn’t want to make the walk down to the church hall on my own, since my last sighting of Rafe had been of him walking into the village.

  The man assured me someone would get back to me, so I hung up, then checked the text from Alex. Can you do me a favor and let Slink out? Caught a ride into work today because I had to drive one of the vans and now I can’t get away.

  I shifted to the other side of the window and looked toward the dead end of the lane. Alex’s MG was parked in front of his cottage. He probably had to move equipment from one site to another, which wouldn’t be possible in his tiny car.

  I hesitated a second, then texted back, an idea forming. Sure, but I don’t have a key.

  Even if the locks on the cottages could be opened without a key, I didn’t want to give that a try. I’d probably be the one person in all of Nether Woodsmoor who wouldn’t be able to jimmy the locks.

  Great! Thxs. Key is under the third flagstone from the back door.

  I quickly texted back. Okay. I’ll do it. Mind if I borrow your car afterward to run into the village?

  Within seconds, a new message from Alex downloaded. No problem. Keys are on the table by the stairs.

  Excellent. I could drive down to the church hall locked securely in Alex’s ca
r. I’d have to deal with the seat that slid around, but I’d rather do that than run the risk of meeting Rafe face-to-face on foot or wait around for the police to return my call. It might be hours before I heard from them.

  Thxs. Let’s meet later. Lots to tell you.

  I hurried upstairs and did a quick survey of the back garden and as much of the path and other back cottage gardens as I could see. I didn’t see anyone except a woman a few cottages down from me laying out placemats on a table in her back garden. Good, if anything went wrong, I could yell for help, and she’d hear me.

  I stomped down the stairs, grabbed my tote bag, and went out through my back garden. I jogged along the path to Alex’s cottage. The woman setting the table looked up as I passed by. “Lovely evening,” I called, and she agreed.

  The gate to Alex’s cottage opened smoothly, and I had no trouble prying up the flagstone to find the key. It looked like my back garden, except there were fewer flowerbeds, maybe because Alex had a dog or maybe because the tall oaks that bordered the side of the cottage cast too much shade. A well-chewed tennis ball lay in the middle of a patch of grass, and a round barbeque grill sat between two plastic chairs on a brick patio near the house.

  With a last quick glance over my shoulder to confirm that the back garden was still empty, I unlocked the back door and stepped inside, then pushed the door firmly closed behind me. I paused a moment, catching my breath. It hadn’t been a long distance, but in my state of hyper-awareness, my heart was skittering and my breathing was choppy.

  I’d expected Slink to come trotting out to meet me, her nails clicking on the hardwood floor, but the house was quiet. “Slink. Here, Slink.” Like my cottage, the back door opened directly into the kitchen, but Ivy Cottage was designed differently from my cottage. It felt a bit larger. The kitchen had more cabinets and was more spacious. Dishes were soaking in the sink, and stacks of papers ranged over the round kitchen table. Two mugs, one blue and one covered in daisies, hung on hooks behind the coffee maker.